So I started on chapter 6 last night, and it's a tricky one in terms of formatting.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the "Weapon Mastery" rules that this is emulating, there are about 25-30 weapons listed, and each one has five (or possibly six if you count "no skill") levels of mastery, which (using my terms) are:

For each mastery of each weapon, there is a set of stats - how far it can be thrown/fired, how much damage it does, how much of an AC bonus the wielder gets and against how many opponents, and what special abilities the wielder can use (deflects, disarms, ensnares, and so on).

While some weapons only have a single set of these stats for each proficiency level, most have two sets - one when used against armed opponents and one when used against unarmed ones.

There's also, of course, proficiency-neutral stats for each weapon such as its size, whether it's one or two handed, and so on.

That's a lot of information about each weapon, and I'm struggling to find the best way of formatting it.

The Cyclopedia itself goes for the "big stonking table" approach, using a horrible double-page table set sideways to the book (i.e. landscape format) which is chock full of little icons - nearly two dozen different ones - which are explained in a key at the bottom of the table. It's difficult to read, badly organised (weapons are split up in a bizarre fashion) and more complicated than it needs to be. For example, instead of splitting stats for a weapon into "armed opponent" and "unarmed opponent" sections it splits them into "primary" and "secondary" sections which forces you to look up which of those sections is for armed opponents and which is for unarmed ones on a weapon-by-weapon basis.

So I was hoping to do better, but I'm not sure what will work best.

The two approaches I can think of are:

1) A weapon description in a similar format to spell descriptions, with bullet-pointed or otherwise listed statistics followed by descriptive text.

2) Descriptive text first, then two mini-tables for each weapon - one for armed opponents and one for unarmed opponents.

In either case, I've already extracted most of the proficiency-independent info into a single summary table; which shows which classes can use each weapon, what damage each weapon does at basic proficiency level, and how much each weapon costs. I'm thinking of expanding it to also show whether the weapon is "military", "hunting" or "general" - my own categories indicating whether the weapon performs better against armed opponents ("military"), unarmed opponents ("hunting"), or is the same against both ("general").

Any suggestions for a good way to organise all this info so it's easily readable?

An example of each type might be helpful, but I do agree with Ashtagon - that some sort of standardisation across the classes would be helpful.

One thing I would say though. Looking at it from an individual character's point of view, I would say that a character's level of proficiency with a weapon would be unlikely to change during a game, but that they might need to fight with both armed opponents and unarmed opponents with the same weapon. So maybe it is worth grouping the stats together so that someone gets both of them in one line.

(In case you're wondering, the reason you can get "disarm" attacks vs unarmed opponents is that opponents with missile weapons also fall into this category.)

I'm not sure I can format the table version properly in a forum post...

One thing I would say though. Looking at it from an individual character's point of view, I would say that a character's level of proficiency with a weapon would be unlikely to change during a game, but that they might need to fight with both armed opponents and unarmed opponents with the same weapon. So maybe it is worth grouping the stats together so that someone gets both of them in one line.

Definitely. You can only increase in proficiency with a weapon about every other level at the most - and even then it takes weeks of game-time to train for it. Changing proficiency is only something that happens very rarely.

But you're likely to want to have both sets of stats (against armed and unarmed opponents) for your current level of proficiency written on your character sheet for quick reference.

(In case you're wondering, the reason you can get "disarm" attacks vs unarmed opponents is that opponents with missile weapons also fall into this category.)

I'm not sure I can format the table version properly in a forum post...

You can do tables in the forum (and I've hand coded one - just for the challange).

However, I would say that your arrangement looks pretty easy to read. I think that you might be able to improve it slightly if you could somehow highlight the lines to help people avoid wandering up or down.

You know, if you do go all the way with this, it might be nice if someone made "weapon cards" that players could print out and use as a mini-cheat sheet.

Blacky the Blackball wrote:

Big Mac wrote:One thing I would say though. Looking at it from an individual character's point of view, I would say that a character's level of proficiency with a weapon would be unlikely to change during a game, but that they might need to fight with both armed opponents and unarmed opponents with the same weapon. So maybe it is worth grouping the stats together so that someone gets both of them in one line.

Definitely. You can only increase in proficiency with a weapon about every other level at the most - and even then it takes weeks of game-time to train for it. Changing proficiency is only something that happens very rarely.

But you're likely to want to have both sets of stats (against armed and unarmed opponents) for your current level of proficiency written on your character sheet for quick reference.

I think I get that. It sounds like you need to have a Dark Dungeons character sheet that has enough space to write all of this stuff.

Those text blocks are far wider than they are tall, but I need to fit them into a three-column page layout where the available space is as tall as I want but not very wide - so it ends up looking like:

In the real thing (done in Microsoft Publisher 2007), I can avoid the heavily abbreviated column headings by rotating the column heading text vertically like I do in the character level tables - that way I can actually put in more meaningful headings like "Deflects" and "Disarm" rather than "Def" and "Dis". Although I'm unable to do that in this phpBB mock-up, so you'll have to use your imagination. It looks much better, trust me (especially because it also doesn't have the wacky colour-scheme)...

(Incidentally, the tables in the previous post look much better under the default "subsilver2" board style than they do under the "prosilver" style. The "prosilver" style seems to really bork them up and makes them barely readable.)

...although I suspect that a table based on proficiency level, rather than the armed/unarmed thing, may be more useful to certain players.

Maybe, later, someone could make a player handout that lists all of the weapons in Dark Dungeons (for each proficiency level) in a single table. Something like that might be a useful "cheat sheet". It might even be the sort of thing that could go into a "Dark Dungeons player's screen"

Well, I've started on the tables - and they're looking fairly good. It's taking an age, though - I've only done a quarter of the weapons so far (that's about 18 tables out of 72!)

Oh well, at least I'm not trying to retro-convert Rolemaster...

I badly need some artwork, though. This chapter in particular is going to look awful as just table-text-table-text-table for page after page. There definitely needs to be some artwork in there to break it up - even if only line drawings of the various weapons.

Have you tried looking around similar wikis to see if they have artwork that might be recyclable by you? Most wiki wikis have the same licence as your wiki, which means you can grab most images without even needing to ask permission.

But I do think it would be worth finding out who made the art and asking permission anyway. If you do that, you might bump into an artist who has a pool of artwork they will let you use.

Failing that, you may want to start a "[Dark Dungeons] Art Request Thread". (I've been thinking of doing the same thing for the Spelljammer Wiki. Dragonlance Lexicon has an art request thread over at the Dragonlance Forums and that seems to work very well.) You could also do the same thing over at ENWorld and Dragonsfoot.

Blacky the Blackball wrote:Unfortunately, I have all the artistic capabilities of a dead badger.

Most of it was straightforward enough, although there were a couple of inconsistencies - for example the various shield weapons list "All Opponents" as a primary target yet still give damage values for "secondary" targets even though no-one is ever a secondary target for them.

I also merged in the unarmed combat rules from the combat chapter, which took some house-ruling. The combat chapter gives an optional "Boxing" weapon mastery, but gives no indication of how that works in conjunction with the martial arts that mystics use other than to mention that mystics' martial arts attacks are normally better than boxing.

What I did was make a single "Unarmed Strikes" proficiency, which does the damage from the "Boxing" table and does knockout chances from the "Blackjack" table (for consistency's sake - the RC unarmed combat rules have their own knockout and stun rules for use without the Weapon Mastery rules, but they're different to those for the blackjack). I then said that anyone can use Unarmed Strikes, and if a mystic was using them then they have the choice of striking to stun - in which case they use the Unarmed Strikes table as-is, or striking to kill - in which case they swap out the damage to the increased damage from the mystic table but lose the stun/knockout chances.

I still need to write all the descriptions of how the special abilities (stun, disarm, entangle, strangle, deflect, skewer, etc.) for the different weapons work, and I still have to look at Wrestling...

The rules for some of the special weapons (Bolas in particular) were inconsistent between the Weapon Mastery chapter and the Equipment chapter. I took the Weapon Mastery chapter as overriding the equivalent text in the Equipment chapter.

And and the text for Disarm checks improving with mastery level didn't quite match up with the actual tables for individual weapons. I took the tables as overriding the text.

I haven't included wrestling yet. I'll add that later - probably in the combat chapter - since even though the RC includes optional "masteries" for it, the rules are completely different to normal combat rules, and the wrestling "masteries" don't work like normal weapon masteries.

Blacky the Blackball wrote:And it can be downloaded for proofreading from here.

I'm not going to do proper proofreading (because I don't have time and don't want to learn RC rules) but this looks pretty good.

I'm not sure why the you had "Druid" in brackets in the table 6.1. The fact that you either have a "Y" or a blank space on that table is interesting. I'm not sure if it aids readability, but you have added in "-" in the blanks of later tables, so it looks inconsistent.

Some of the later tables have weird abbreviations (like "X Bow, H vs Unarmed Opponents"). If you could possibly jiggle the space a bit and make the room for longhand titles that would look better.

The same goes for the way that these many tables (which don't yet have table numbers) are all up and down throughout the chapter. I know this is only the draft (for alpha testing) but that might be something you want to try to beautify before the final release.

Blacky the Blackball wrote:And it can be downloaded for proofreading from here.

I'm not going to do proper proofreading (because I don't have time and don't want to learn RC rules) but this looks pretty good.

I'm not sure why the you had "Druid" in brackets in the table 6.1. The fact that you either have a "Y" or a blank space on that table is interesting. I'm not sure if it aids readability, but you have added in "-" in the blanks of later tables, so it looks inconsistent.

"Druid" was originally "Cleric (Druid)" but I had to drop the "Cleric" bit for lack of space. I'll take the brackets off.

And I'll also add "-"s in the table.

Thanks.

Some of the later tables have weird abbreviations (like "X Bow, H vs Unarmed Opponents"). If you could possibly jiggle the space a bit and make the room for longhand titles that would look better.

I know. It's a bugger is that - to use the technical term. If I want to keep the formating consistent with other tables then I need to either make these tables bigger or abbreviate the weapon names in a couple of places. I chose the latter because that way I could keep the tables within a single column (just).

It's a lesser evil, at the moment.

The same goes for the way that these many tables (which don't yet have table numbers) are all up and down throughout the chapter. I know this is only the draft (for alpha testing) but that might be something you want to try to beautify before the final release.

I'll try making the table headers two line (or even three line in some places). That will give me room to add the table numbers and to lose the abbreviations, at the cost of making each table bigger.

I'm hoping that when I get some artwork together I'll be able to have a picture of each weapon between the weapon name and the tables for it, so hopefully that should make things a little bit more attractive.

Ashtagon wrote:I know it technically counts as reprinting the same information twice, but It'd be very helpful is the explanation of the terms relevant to each weapon were included within each weapon description.

Printing stuff twice isn't so bad, but it might be a problem with things like the AC bonuses - which about half the weapons get. If that were included with each weapon that has it then it would need to be printed about twenty times.

There's probably a compromise of some kind that I can do. I'll experiment...

The shape is looking a lot better. Obviously this isn't your final thing, but it is looking good. I like the way you have mostly got all the stuff about one weapon into a single column. I think that would enable someone to print out that page and cut out a strip to keep with their character sheet.

As an outsider looking in, I think the thing I would struggle with most would be the six letters at the left hand side of each weapon table. I don't know if you would have the space to put a footnote on the bottom of each page (or each two page spread) but I think something like that could help newbies. (Old hands might not need it at all, but if your final layout allows it it might be worth the page space). At the very least, you need to put down your "official abbreviations" in the list of proficiencies on page 29.

Actually I wonder if you should have an appendix (after Chapter 21) that lists all of the "standard abbreviations" used in Dark Dungeons. I'm personally not into using abbreviations with things like character blocks (and have moaned about that sort of thing in the past) but a lot of other people do seem to like having shorthand for this sort of thing. So I think it might be worth havng a list for those that do want to do this. An abbreviation list could also be good as it would help you make sure that you don't abbreviate two different things the same way. (For example, if "B" is going to be "Basic Proficiency" you would have to use something else if you added a "Barbarian" class in a Dark Dungeons expansion.)

I think the "Knockout" section for Unarmed Strikes could do with a bit of rewording. It talks about "the weapon" and that seems a bit weird for a weapon that isn't really a weapon, but a body part. It would seem OK in a generic section, but as you have stuck it into the Unarmed Strikes section I think that it might look easier on the eye if it said something like: "Any target that an unarmed strike hits may become delayed, stunned or knocked out..."

Big Mac wrote:As an outsider looking in, I think the thing I would struggle with most would be the six letters at the left hand side of each weapon table. I don't know if you would have the space to put a footnote on the bottom of each page (or each two page spread) but I think something like that could help newbies. (Old hands might not need it at all, but if your final layout allows it it might be worth the page space). At the very least, you need to put down your "official abbreviations" in the list of proficiencies on page 29.

Done.

Actually I wonder if you should have an appendix (after Chapter 21) that lists all of the "standard abbreviations" used in Dark Dungeons. I'm personally not into using abbreviations with things like character blocks (and have moaned about that sort of thing in the past) but a lot of other people do seem to like having shorthand for this sort of thing. So I think it might be worth havng a list for those that do want to do this. An abbreviation list could also be good as it would help you make sure that you don't abbreviate two different things the same way. (For example, if "B" is going to be "Basic Proficiency" you would have to use something else if you added a "Barbarian" class in a Dark Dungeons expansion.)

I've already got an introductory chapter planned that explains the basics of the game and includes a glossary of terms. I'll add abbreviations to that.

I think the "Knockout" section for Unarmed Strikes could do with a bit of rewording. It talks about "the weapon" and that seems a bit weird for a weapon that isn't really a weapon, but a body part. It would seem OK in a generic section, but as you have stuck it into the Unarmed Strikes section I think that it might look easier on the eye if it said something like: "Any target that an unarmed strike hits may become delayed, stunned or knocked out..."

It was copy/pasted from the generic "Knockout" description at the end of the chapter (Unarmed Strikes aren't the only attack that gets that ability), and I accidentally left that wording in.

No problem. But I'm not a fan of the right edition and it would be nice to see someone with more of a grognoid perspective cast a critical eye on your work and do some constructive nit-picking. I'm sure someone with that sort of experience would be able to spot possible problems better than me.